


Along Came a Mercenary

by Merfilly



Series: Dinah's DCU Free For All Table [1]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few ficlets from the OTPoW at different points. Last two scenes present two possible endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Along Came a Mercenary

"This is your fault," Dinah told the man accompanying her. "I had the locals eating out of my hand."

"And you were perfectly welcome to stay there until they decided to eat your hand," he told her in amusement, even as he took stock of their supplies.

"They were not cannibals."

"Suit yourself, sister." Slade was glad it was the Amazon area. Plenty of food around, potable water, and the ability to make a shelter. He might be able to salvage something of one of their comms, but he needed to rest his leg, let it finish healing from the spiral break. As if thinking about it had reminded it to hurt, he had to suck in a quick breath. Maybe running on it had been stupid, but the situation had demanded it, and it had been mostly rejoined, he was sure.

She saw the pain on his face, and came over, kneeling beside him. "Leg?" His short nod was enough for her to frown. "Get the damn armor out of my way then, so I can actually feel what I'm doing."

"It's set," he growled. "Just needs time."

She looked up at him with a stubborn cast to her features. "You'll let me be the judge of that, you infuriating manchild! You could very easily have dislodged it if it was only half-healed when you pulled that stunt."

Slade started to argue with her, for sake of arguing, but he knew they were safe here. There was shelter to be had, a clear pool of water, even a small waterfall just in sight of where they'd stopped. "Sister, how do your teammates put up with you?" he groused, raising up enough to drop the lower half of his gear. He had to admit he was just a little infatuated with the way she could so completely ignore him as a man right now, her hands going to the break and probing. It was painful, but she confirmed what he knew.

"Still holding, but you'd do good to let me splint it, just to be sure."

"Waste of time; one good sleep and it will be fused fully."

Again, he found himself staring into her angry eyes. "Slade Wilson, you are a most irritating male at times!" With that announced, she rose, spun, and stalked off.

He watched her, between getting his pants back on, and then setting up a shelter for them to share the night in. The prospects were interesting...if she decided to get her temper in control. If not...he shrugged. They'd met up in Rio, and followed a mutual case together on a very long, trying trail that had finally gotten them to this point. It was, perhaps, the longest they'd ever kept each other's company.

When he glanced back up to see what she'd gotten into while he made the lean-to, he had to swallow. Dinah was, by anyone's standards, a beauty. She traded on that fact in her fighting style, kicking men in the hormones before she ever laid a hand on them.

Right now, Slade felt privileged to see her like this. She had removed her gear, and was standing under the waterfall to get the grime off, her blonde hair plastered down her back, and her face turned up into the gentle flow. The way the water cascaded over her firm body, trailing teasingly over curves that had less to do with muscles and more with femininity had his undivided attention.

"Beautiful, smart, and dangerous when she wants to be," he whispered. "Wintergreen, old friend, I wish you were here to save me." He could only hope her mood toward to him changed with the waterfall's cleansing, because that was one temptation he truly did not want to resist.

* * *

Dinah had found playing the social scene a break from her usual fists' fury nights. She swirled through the crowd, picking up gossip, observing, and doing everything her partner needed her to for this mission.

Seeing the white-haired man in a sharp cut tuxedo with his white eye patch on made her smile.

"That's Deathstroke," Oracle said in her ear, using the camera piece. "Why is he there?"

"Let me find out," Dinah said, before 'adjusting' her jewelry. "I'm turning off...he might notice the equipment hum." Over Oracle's indignant squawk, she did just that, and then she was free to go flirt to her heart's content with the very dangerous, much older man with the body to die for.

* * *

Deathstroke the Terminator was a man renowned for his patience, for his ability to build a plan and make it happen.

When a contract showed up offering him a road into Gorilla City so he could get at Grodd, he took it. The benefit of cultivating the right hand of Oracle, however, was one he had neither counted on, nor chosen to give up.

Finding her to be a bit of a bleeding heart, he shifted his modus operandi. Let him take the easy money for a time. Working big business kept her thinking he might be legitimate in his 'business' attitude.

So it continued, with her pleasantly entertaining him, learning more and more about Oracle and Gotham's other heroes through her. So easy to win her confidence, especially after the Archer cheated on her again. He would have to thank Drakon some day for making it quite that simple.

He had an inroad on Oracle, on the Kid to a degree, someone to warm his bed from time to time. In his own way, he did care for her; she was fairly likable.

But she was also tied strongly to Harper. The boy would pay for his callousness. As would the JSA, who hadn't bothered to stand by America in Korea. The League would learn that playing god was not a smart thing to do. All it would take was the right moment to use her as his trump card.

Alexander Luthor handed him the opportunity, hiring him to guard Light. Watching her appeal to him, only to go down to her own nightmare of being bound and helpless was one strike. If he had not been set to humiliate the League as a whole, he might have made the pain more permanent for them by killing her there and then.

It was only after everything was said and done, more than a year later, that he discovered in cultivating her, he had set himself up for failure. As much as he had studied her, he never really took to heart that she was, under it all, both a Bat and an Arrow.

The Bat had sized up every weakness, and the Arrow was practical enough to use them.

It was a mistake he would get plenty of time to think about, as he cooled his heels in a prison on a planet far from Earth, courtesy of her pet Green Lantern.

* * *

In the end, she died by their lifestyle.

Always first into a fight caught up with her during an assault by old enemies of the Justice Society. She took a blast meant for Red Arrow, and kept fighting, despite the injuries inside her.

It took her three days in the hospital.

Three days of vigil, three days of guilt in one archer's eyes, and anguish in the other's, as two men watched over her.

Roy could not go to the funeral. Ollie barely made it through without breaking down incoherently. 

He went back, two days later, and almost lost his full temper.

Slade Wilson was kneeling at her grave, placing African Violets among the flowers already there.

Ollie managed, just barely, not to be rash... since the resolution of the government's brilliant plan to exile the villains, the returned mercenary had not made a single splash.

All those old questions, however, crowded to the front of Ollie's mind, as the mercenary remained where he was for several minutes.

When Slade left, he did not tempt fate by walking past the archer. The only way Ollie even knew he'd been noticed was in a brief pause by the tall man at the gate.

Ollie walked to the grave, crouching to look at the flowers, wondering again, just how his Pretty Bird had been involved with that man, but unable to deny the proof of attachment in the merc's visit to the grave.

* * *

It was after she helped bring Slade Wilson down, convinced a world court that he needed to be sentenced to death as a mercy to the future, that she learned the truth about what the Lazarus Pit had done to her.

No one, not even Roy, fully understood how difficult it was for her to cope with her life when Dr. Midnite told her the Lazarus Pit energies were continually fueled by the mix of energies that had originally created a mutant out of the original Black Canary's daughter.

It was Rose Wilson, also doomed to an immortality begun in pain and betrayal that learned the truth, that Dinah had been the mysterious girl her father had been seeing prior to his insanity. The encounter, twenty years into Dinah's self-imposed wandering exile, was one that left Rose numb inside.


End file.
